High-Functioning, Low Joy: Why Women Are Overachieving On Empty

Forbes

16-05-2025

Have you been checking off milestones like items on a to-do list instead of taking time to celebrate your wins? Do you smile through gritted teeth? How many times have you burned yourself out working to get to the next level, to hit your next goal, only to find that the target keeps moving? Do you struggle to relax when you finally get a day off? Or have you ever woken up realizing you have no joy in your work but don't really know where to go from there? Read on for expert tips on identifying what's driving this pattern and what you can do to break free.
Hidden depression and shame may be driving burnout.
What drives us to stay in constant motion
You likely didn't map out your future career with the intention of being constantly busy and exhausted, so how did you end up in this pattern?
Amina AlTai is an executive coach and author of The Ambition Trap: How to stop chasing and Start living. She points to shame and perfectionism as factors in why we push ourselves to the limit and beyond. 'Shame is the root of most of it. At the bottom of all of this is the feeling for most of us that we are unlovable, unworthy.' We get caught up in thinking that we can prove our worth via the quality of our work and by the volume how much we can do.
'Perfectionism is a survival tactic rooted in imposter syndrome for women and other historically excluded people. A lot of the times, the spaces that we want to be in, we look around and we don't always see people that look like us. We question our sense of belonging. What happens is when we question our sense of belonging, we tend to double down and work harder to prove to people that we deserve a seat at the table.'
She also points to the fact that they have long been held to different standards than their male counterparts, rarely afforded the same grace when they do fail, amplifying the feeling that they're not allowed to make mistakes. 'Sometimes that impacts our ability to take risks as well,' adds AlTai, 'because we're so worried about a misstep and how it's going to look and what's going to happen to us that we often won't innovate as a result of that.'
Hidden depression and trauma can also be factors that cause us to overwork and overdo. Dr. Judith Joseph is a Columbia-trained psychiatrist, NYU professor and author of High Functioning: Overcome your hidden depression and reclaim your joy. 'Many people don't realize that when they have painful experiences that shape the way that they see the world and the way that they interact in the world, that these are traumas.' Because we're conditioned to think of trauma as the 'big T' stuff, sometimes people overlook the negative experiences that still cause trauma and impact their view of themselves and the world around them. Even when people try to ignore the trauma or push it to the background, says Dr. Joseph, 'Over time, that trauma does sneak up in many different ways. It sneaks up in the choices that you make and the people that you love and the way that you view yourself.' This can bleed into workplace dynamics.
And when depression is in the mix, this can take away from feeling joy and a sense of accomplishment, pushing you to just keep going, working towards the next milestone without taking a break to appreciate your achievements.
Identifying the wounds driving your mindset and habits is a powerful step to take towards building healthier ones, she says. Noticing how that shame and perfectionism drive up is the first step towards making a shift away from those behaviors that put us on the track to burnout.
Not feeling able to celebrate your wins is a common sign of burnout
Signs of hidden depression and burnout
Being aware of hidden depression and trauma and the patterns they contribute to and spotting them in yourself can be two different things. You could be going through the motions of a robust self-care practice, AlTai explains, doing yoga and stretching and red light therapy and sauna and ice baths and journaling and meditation and still feel burnt out. This is because you're not acknowledging the root causes of your burnout.
Dr. Joseph says, 'Think about the millions of people in the world who have symptoms of depression, who are over-functioning, showing up for others, being the rock, being the parent, being the educator, being the entrepreneur and not breaking down. They don't acknowledge the distress or they just don't have the tools to express it, or they just 'weren't brought up that way.'' These are the people who often are neglected because they don't 'check the boxes,' in the traditional sense, for meeting treatment criteria, she explains. This is why noticing when you need help and advocating for yourself can be so powerful.
Here are some signs to look for:
AlTai adds, 'I think it's always important to understand where your baseline is so you can watch for changes and get a sense of what they mean for you.'
Getting in touch with what really makes you happy-and what holds you back from that—is an important ... More step to reclaiming joy.
First steps to reclaim joy in your work life
Just as a reminder, the goal is not to be blissfully happy every moment of every day. If the line 'I'm so depressed I act like it's my birthday' from Taylor Swift's 'I Can Do It With A Broken Heart' resonated with you, congrats! You have enough self-awareness to realize that faking joy and experiencing joy feel different.
Chasing constant happiness as your goal can actually make you feel pretty bad about yourself when you fail to reach that impossible standard. AlTai explains, 'Our obsession with happiness is making us really miserable because in the West we are really obsessed with this notion of happiness. Whereas in eastern traditions, they're more concerned with contentment. And contentment, when it's translated from a lot of ancient texts, means unconditional wholeness. And so happiness by nature is meant to be transient. It's an emotion and emotions are meant to change all the time. They are energy in motion. We're not meant to be happy all the time. We're meant to feel happy, sad, angry, joyful, elated, bummed—out all the things.' Contentment, she says, is a more stable state from which we can navigate life's ups and downs, helping us feel more resilient.
In her book, Dr. Joseph talks about 'the five V's,' which are validation, venting, values, vision and vitals, based on mindfulness research, positive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy.' It's important to acknowledge and express how you feel and then look at how your current situation aligns (or doesn't) with your values. From there, she explains, you can take stock of various measures of joy in your life and then visualize the life you want so you can start focusing on the things you need to feel nourished and alive. She encourages identifying which one or two of these steps would be the place for you to start.
'In research,' she explains, 'when we measure happiness in science, we're measuring points of joy. We're adding up whether or not when you're with your loved ones, do you feel connected when you're eating your food, are you savoring it when you take a nap or do you feel rested? Those are the points of joy that are happiness. So think about joy as the experience and happiness as the idea. And when people chase the idea, they're still not happy. And then there's a huge reframe. So when you pour into your values every day and you're experiencing joy, that is what happiness is. It's now, it's not an elusive point in the future.'
And while those vitals— the things that nourish your body and your brain—could be things like eating well, sleeping enough, and moving your body, she adds, some important ones that often get overlooked are our relationship with technology, our relationships with others and our work-life relationship. Your relationship to yourself is also of the utmost importance, says Dr. Joseph. 'You have to love yourself. If you are not taking care of yourself, people pick up on that. You are projecting that into the world.'
Knowing where you struggle and taking proactive steps can help protect against future burnout.
Preventing future burnout
Building awareness of where your burnout-driving behaviors come from and taking steps to respond mindfully to your emotions can be very helpful in preventing future burnout. AlTai also likes to employ a tool called The Resentment Line.
'A lot of us live below the resentment line and we don't tell anybody where this line is. So the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like If we live below it, we are resentful. If we live above it, we're not resentful. And sometimes we live below the resentment line because we're letting people trespass all over our boundaries. Sometimes we're living below the resentment line because we're not making enough money. There's so many reasons that we could live below the resentment line, but all of that also exacerbates burnout.'
She also encourages looking at how you're showing up in your work life (or personal life, if that's where you're struggling) and decide what you'd like to shift, moving forward. Draw some boundaries. 'Boundaries play such a big role. What are you willing to tolerate? What are you not willing to tolerate? What will you say yes to? What will you say no to? And know your trade-offs. So if you say yes to something and your plate's already full, it usually means you have to say no to something else.'
If you struggle with low self-worth and are quick to beat up on yourself if you don't do something perfectly or are met with rejection, says Dr. Joseph, 'You should challenge that belief and say, no, I actually belong here and I did a great job and they should want me and I don't have to burn myself out to be here. And when you start to realize that all of these behaviors are tied to these past unresolved things that happened to you, and you make different decisions in life, then you have more control over whether or not you burn out. But many of us, we continue to run ourselves ragged because we don't know what the core is, why we do this in the first place. And so that's why I encourage people to understand the science of their happiness. When you understand what's making you unhappy, then you know how to protect what will make you happy, and you'll fight for that versus burning yourself out and running yourself ragged.'